My Musical Theater Voyage of Discovery; The Jerry Herman Files -- Milk and Honey; Miss Spectacular; Mrs Santa Claus

It has been difficult for me to wrap up my little series of blogs about Jerry Herman because the two Broadway musicals that are left for me to write about are MILK AND HONEY and the concept album of MISS SPECTACULAR, which has never been produced on Broadway. The reason I haven’t been able to finish this little process is because I have only ever listened to each of these cds once. Each. I will listen to them again – but I only recently picked up the copies of them that I have and played them. I really liked both of these cds! I never bothered to learn about Milk and Honey, though I had heard the songs Shalom and Milk and Honey on the Tony awards or in Jerry Herman reviews. This show just slipped by me… So I imported it into my Ipod and listened to it on the treadmill at the gym and was delightfully caught up in it! The songs are charming and clever, pretty and melodic; and the performances were very good! So, much to my surprise, I didn’t find myself really interested in making any deletions. I know I will play it again.

MISS SPECTACULAR is a concept album and I don’t know the exact history of the show, whether it has been produced or not; nothing, really. I just got a copy of the cd from a friend and put it into my Ipod and played it and found it delightful. Pat, sitting in the other room, called out to me “Is that a new Jerry Herman musical?” He could just tell by the way the score is written and performed. This cd has some of the best voices you’ll ever find in musical theater – Debbie Gravitte, Michael Feinstein, Christine Baranski, Faith Prince, Steve Lawrence and the one and only Karen Morrow. These voices, alone, make owning this cd a must – but it turns out that the songs are all as great as I would have thought they would be! Yay!

Finally, I would like to touch upon the movie soundtrack to MRS SANTA CLAUS. It’s a Christmas movie with a score by Jerry Herman in which Angela Lansbury plays the title role. Now. You KNOW I have the dvd and the cd and that I watch the movie and listen to the album, don’t you? I think it is lovely, it’s charming. It’s the kind of holiday movie that, I am sure, touched some pre-teen gay boy and made him fall in love with musicals, just the same way Hello, Dolly did to me. I am a big supporter of Mrs Santa Claus and I am looking forward to (a lot) watching it this holiday season.

I have been wanting to write a story about Jerry Herman for awhile .. I think it’s time.
I feel a blog coming on.